What is Real Southern Cooking? - Part 1 | Take on the South - Episode 8

Kaltura

Dr. Walter Edgar, John T. Edge, Author and Director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, University of Mississippi, Matt and Ted Lee, award winning cookbook authors will debate "What is Real Southern Cooking?" on the next Take on The South. Try cooking some of our favorite southern delicacies.

Debaters 

John T. Edge writes a monthly column, “United Tastes,” for the New York Times.  He is a contributing editor at Garden & Gun and a longtime columnist for the Oxford American and a contributing editor at Gourmet.  His work for Saveur and other magazines has been featured in seven editions of the Best Food Writing compilation.  He has been nominated for five James Beard Foundation Awards, including two M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Awards.  In 2009, he was inducted into Beard’s Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America.  Edge holds a master’s degree in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi.  He is director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, where he documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South. He has a number of books to his credit, including the James Beard Award-nominated cookbook, A Gracious Plenty: Recipes and Recollections from the American South.  A four books series on iconic American eats:  Fried Chicken:  An American Story; Apple Pie: An American Story; Hamburgers & Fries:  An American Story; and Donuts:  An American Passion.  Southern Belly:  The Ultimate Food Lover’s Companion to the South.  Edge is editor of the foodways volume of the New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.  And he is general editor of the book series, Cornbread Nation:  The Best of Southern Food Writing.  Edge has served as culinary curator for the weekend edition of NPR’s All Things Considered, and he has been featured on dozens of televisions shows, from CBS Sunday Morning to Iron Chef. 

Siblings Matt and Ted Lee grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. When they left to attend colleges in the Northeast, they so missed the foods of their hometown that they founded The Lee Bros. Boiled Peanuts Catalogue, a mail-order catalogue for southern pantry staples like stone-ground grits, fig preserves, and, of course, boiled peanuts. When an editor of a travel magazine asked them to write a story about road-tripping their home state in search of great food, they embarked on a second career as food and travel journalists. They currently write food stories for Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, GQ, The New York Times, and are the wine columnists for Martha Stewart Living.

The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook won Amazon Editors' #1 Best Cookbook of 2006, two International Association of Culinary Professionals awards (including the Julia Child Award) and two James Beard Awards, including Cookbook of the Year. They are the youngest authors ever to take Cookbook of the Year.  Simple Fresh Southern was also recently nominated for a James Beard Award.

Resources

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